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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23788372">The Sealed Door</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazaha_87/pseuds/Kazaha_87'>Kazaha_87</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kyou Kara Maou!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:02:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,116</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23788372</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazaha_87/pseuds/Kazaha_87</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was born the first time, the Great Sage had a difficult gift to handle, but in a way, during his first long life, he had managed well enough even with it.<br/>But that balanced state didn't last very long, and the moment arrived when he came to the decision to do without it.<br/>And everything went on just fine, until the seal he had put on it accidentally broke...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Implied Murata Ken/Yozak Gurrier, Murata Ken &amp; Wolfram von Bielefeld, implied Wolfram von Bielefeld/Shibuya Yuuri</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>After a long pause due to total lack of inspiration for any kind of story, I'm back it seems...</p><p>I'm still not sure where this story wants to go, but I'm here to find out together with you, if you'll want to come with me and see!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>She was desperate: the pain in her chest didn’t falter.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She couldn’t believe how much being a woman could aggravate her empathy. It was overwhelming.</em>
</p><p><em>By now she resonated with </em>everything<em>! She was at a point where not even being alone, far from people, helped anymore.</em></p><p>
  <em>There was no safe place for her, whatever she did, wherever she went.</em>
</p><p><em>Once she turned sixteen, she started to resonate even with plants, with rocks, with the </em>weather<em>, with </em>objects<em>!</em></p><p>
  <em>If only Erhard were still alive, maybe he could have helped her find a solution…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then, in a lucid moment, she remembered of an old book of when, while she still was Shinou’s Great Sage, she was studying how to arrange the ritual for the unsealing of the doors to her pastlives memories.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Maybe she could find a way to seal something more than just memories behind one of these doors, because, in this state, there was no way that she could have accomplished her duty, nor now, not in the future…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She had to do something.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>…she had no choice.</em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After lunch, as he often did when he was staying at Covenant Castle, Ken was taking a stroll in the garden. It was a sunny day of mid spring, and the temperature was just perfect to go around with just his jacket.</p><p>He decided to enjoy the opportunity until he could, because in a couple of weeks he would have walked in a pool of sweat in the same attire along the same path, which was almost all under the sun.</p><p>Sadly, that was also his favorite promenade, so he better took advantage of that perfect weather and temperature until he could…</p><p>When he reached the fountain in the south garden, at last, he just sat on the lonely bench in front of one of Lady Cheri’s many flowerbed spread around the castle courtyards to enjoy the warmth. Then he opened the book he brought with him on a random page.</p><p><em>The Cage</em>, he read.</p><p>It was a poem book.</p><p>He scoffed and closed it again, slightly shaking his head.</p><p>“Definitely the wrong book this time”, he uttered to himself.</p><p>Truth was that he was sick and tired of Shin Makoku…</p><p>Maybe he should just have to decide to go back to Earth and start his life again.</p><p>Being a porno actress in his late life hadn’t been such a bad pastime, actually, but to do the same thing twice, even if now he was a man, wasn’t fun.</p><p>If only he could have been a pirate again… THAT was an exciting way of living! But there were no real pirates around for the last two centuries now on Earth, and even if in Shin Makoku there were a lot, the hassle to cover all the time so that no one could recognize him, and the fact that Ulrike would have easily spotted him, weren’t worth the effort.</p><p>And going around exploring – which meant to stay alone with himself most of the time – wasn’t a thrilling perspective at all.</p><p>He needed <em>entertainment</em>!</p><p>But just watching was too boring too, and the last ten years were being proof enough of that…</p><p>He heaved a sigh.</p><p>In four thousand years on Earth he had done <em>everything.</em> He had <em>been</em> everything. He had experienced everything!</p><p>He had decided to stay in Shin Makoku at the time because he had seen a good source of entertainment in Yuuri and Wolfram and their explosive relationship, but now, after almost ten years, nothing had changed or developed and they were just arguing and making peace all the time over the same few matters.</p><p>…because he didn’t stay in order to help Yuuri become a good Maoh: he already was! That thought in particular was just what people expected him to think as the Great Sage… and who was him to disappoint them in telling them they were totally, utterly wrong?</p><p>Truth was that he wasn’t really needed there. After all, what else could he do that Gunter or Gwendal couldn’t?</p><p>With another heavy sigh, he decided to lay down and use the book to shelter his face from the sun while taking a nap there, but the peace and quiet of the wind in his ears and the birds singing didn’t last very long…</p><p>“Now that we are alone here”, Wolfram’s angry and embittered voice suddenly broke the pleasant silence, “tell me why you can’t show a bit more of appreciation for my presents to you! I put <em>all of my love</em> for you and Greta in the last painting, but instead of putting it on one of the walls in our quarters, you just put it in the closet with all my other paintings that I gave you!”</p><p>“Why indeed…”, Ken chipped in snickering slightly while moving the book from his face even if not moving from his position over the bench. “But oh, don’t mind me. Think of me as a garden gnome and please continue”, he went on in a flat tone. “I was just getting bored here and needed some kind of entertainment. It’s perfect timing!”</p><p>Wolfram tinged red to the tip of his ears while Yuuri only sighed.</p><p>“You really don’t have ‘tact’ in your dictionary, eh?”, the Maoh replied, half annoyed and half relieved of the interruption to Wolfram’s last tantrum. Then he turned again towards his fiancé and replied to his complaining. “Ok, Wolf: I promise that this one will find a place on a wall this evening, but don’t expect me to put it in front of our bed. I forgot how many times I already told you that if you enjoy your time exploring new art styles I’m ok, but I <em>know </em>that if I happen to wake up and find one of your paintings in my face I’ll scream, and you would get even more angry than now. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. Also because I know that when you say “on a wall”, you mean <em>that</em> wall.”</p><p>“Why can’t you understand?!”, Wolfram shouted back. “You seem to never think about my feelings! Whenever you put one of my presents to you in the closet, it’s the same as putting me in there, like I’m something you don’t need!”</p><p>“You’re exaggerating now and you know it, Wolf. You’re such a drama queen!”</p><p>“And you’re an insensitive wimp!”</p><p>“I’m with the drama queen on this, Yuuri”, Ken stepped in with a half grin painted on his face while going back to a sitting position. “After all these years you should have been able to get used to your fiancé’s art, you know…”</p><p>“No one asked for your opinion!” Yuuri and Wolfram snapped together.</p><p>At that, Ken clapped his hands and whistled in a theatrical way.</p><p>“Wow! Your scenic timing is always perfect! Bravo! When Lord von Christ isn’t around, you’re the best entertainment in the castle!”</p><p>“Sage, you’re <em>the</em> <em>worst</em>!”, Wolfram roared on the verge of tears, “And you, Yuuri… you always find a way to let me down… I’m so fed up with the both of you!” and that said he stomped away, leaving the two double blacks behind.</p><p>Yuuri heaved a sigh.</p><p>“Happy, now?”</p><p>“Well yes, thank you. By the way, Shibuya: aren’t you going to follow him?”</p><p>“What for? And after you worsened the situation… as always…” Yuuri sighed again with no spirit left in him. “You should stop toying with people, Murata. You always treat everything as if it were a game. Sometimes I can’t stop asking myself if you really are a human with flesh and bones and emotions…” and that said, without waiting for a reply, he finally left too, leaving him there on his bench.</p><p>“…flesh and bones yes”, Ken muttered to no one in particular once left alone in the garden, “Emotions? …I guess I lost them somewhere along the way…”</p><p>He stayed on the bench for a while, watching at the water spilling from the fountain in front of him, when an idea popped in his head and gave him a reason to move from there.</p><p>He could go fetch Yozak to kill time! The sexy thing…</p><p><em>Yeah, why not?</em>, he thought and moved toward the tower of pigeons to send him a message – which was the fastest and most discrete way to summon him since the man could be almost anywhere, inside the castle or out, on Lord von Voltaire’s orders…</p><p>He seriously hoped that the ginger man could spare some time for him without having to wait for the nighttime, but he would have discovered that soon enough...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ken was walking along the hallway that brought to the tower when he noticed some smoke coming out from under one of the doors.</p><p>
  <em>The art room.</em>
</p><p>For a fraction of second, he thought about leaving without interfering, but curiosity won in the end. As always.</p><p>For some reason, while reaching the doorknob to discover what was happening inside and satiate his thirst, his thoughts traveled in search for the start of this definitely protrusive condition in him, since he remembered pretty well that he wasn’t born like that during his first life, but then, all the other lifetimes, he had always been as curious as a monkey.</p><p>…at least all the ones he could remember of…</p><p>There was just <em>one</em> <em>door</em> inside his mind that had always been sealed since he could remember.</p><p><em>Who knows why I remembered of </em>that<em> door now?</em>, he asked himself curiously, but he would have soon regretted his wonderings…</p><p>The moment he opened the door a hot wave engulfed him and breathing hot air gave him the impression of suffocating.</p><p>Then, it all happened in an instant: the realization that the seal on his memories had been broken the moment he opened that door in the physical world, and the suffocating wave that had crushed him then became an overwhelming wave of forgotten memories <em>and emotions</em>… things he had forgotten <em>for a reason</em>!</p><p>He tried and tried again to breathe, but couldn’t. It was as if he had forgotten how to…</p><p>His chest hurt as if someone was stepping on it, squashing him as if they wanted to squeeze his guts out that way.</p><p>He brought his right hand to his chest while with the other he searched frantically for the doorframe in order to stand, but his legs quickly gave in and he fell on his knees.</p><p>The sudden thud at his back made Wolfram, who was standing straight in the middle of the room watching at the pyre he had made of all his paintings – which could be easily more than a hundred, maybe two – turn toward the noise. But the view of the sage crooked on his knees ready to pass out any moment shocked him so much that he wasn’t able to act in time to grab him before he could fall flat on the floor.</p><p>Then, once he collected himself again, imagining the temperature could be the reason of that fainting – after all the sage was human! – the blond mazoku took him into his arms and helped him on the stone floor just outside the art room, closing the door behind himself with a kick in order to leave the heat inside, before using some generic healing magic on him.</p><p>“You should be more careful! You’re a <em>human</em>, after all!” Wolfram loudly complained when Ken opened his eyes again, but, after the previous apnea, crossing the firewielder’s gaze brought Ken to hyperventilate for some reason he wasn’t lucid enough to grasp.</p><p>The only thing Ken could think of was “too much” and “overwhelming”, and the sensation of his chest being crushed was still vivid there. He brought a hand back against it and crouched on himself, but it didn’t help relieving him of that smashing pain.</p><p>He tried to tell the demon to leave him, to go as far from him as he could, but he still couldn’t speak, so he started to wave the free hand in the air towards him in hope that he could understand anyway and free him of his overwhelming aura. But every effort of his had been to no avail, because Wolfram was too worried to just obey and leave him there unattended in such a condition, since the blond was sure that trying to get rid of him was just the other’s pride attempt to keep up appearances. And he wouldn’t have leaved for such a stupid reason, even if he couldn’t stand the man.</p><p>“I’m not leaving you like that until you feel a little bit better to move, and then I’ll accompany you to the infirmary to see Gisela.” Wolfram stated in reply to the other’s silent protest, resolute, but the sage’s movement, at that, became only more desperate and frantic.</p><p>All reason lost in him, then, Ken started to scream like a mad man.</p><p>“Leave me! Leave me I told you! LEAVE!!”</p><p>“And I told you that I’m not leaving!”, Wolfram countered back, now even more resolute than before, but he was stunned at the sage’s almost possessed retort that came then.</p><p>“<em>You’re too much</em>!! It <em>hurts</em>! Anybody but <em>you</em>, so go call for whomever you want and <em>don’t</em> ever come back! GO. <em>AWAY</em>!”</p><p>In front of such an explicit refusal not only of his help, but <em>of him as a person</em>, Wolfram remained frozen still, bent on his knees where he already was next to the sage, looking at him with blank eyes on the verge of tears. But that only aggravated Ken’s condition and, consequently, desperation.</p><p>Gathering his last ounce of strength, Ken tried to raise on his feet since Wolfram didn’t show any attempt to do as he had been ordered, but when he fell back on his knees he started to scream again.</p><p>“Do you want to kill me?! <em>Go</em>, God! <em>GO</em>!”, and when Wolfram, broken, finally ran away and the air around him became lighter enough for him to be able to breathe once more, Ken relaxed and passed out again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he woke up, he was in the infirmary and had no idea how he had arrived there, or who brought him.</p><p>“Finally you are awake”, Gisela’s voice broke the silence and he turned towards her but replied nothing.</p><p>“I checked your heart since it seemed that you felt pain in your chest, but everything is fine with your body. You might have inhaled smoke, since they found you near the art room that was on fire. By the way, people heard you scream against someone and saw Lord von Bielefeld run away, so I believe that your condition wasn’t due to smoke inhaling… may I ask you what happened in order to be able to make a better diagnosis of your physical condition?”, she asked him at last, as pragmatic as always, but he replied with only one word: “Nothing”.</p><p>“Nothing meaning that you don’t remember?”, she queried, the doctor in her hoping in a more detailed answer to satiate her professional curiosity.</p><p>“No, nothing meaning nothing.” the sage replied, final. “Thank you for your help. Now I should leave for the temple and I think I will stay there for a while, if you would be so kind as to report to the others of my decision…”</p><p>“I’m not going to let you out of here before tomorrow morning, Your Eminence”, and her tone was as final as his. “You were passed out for more than two hours. You would convene that it was <em>a lot of time</em> for what I think was just a panic attack of some sort.”</p><p>“Then you can leave me. If something happens, I will call for you. Please reassure everybody that I’m fine now, but don’t let anybody pass. I don’t feel like having visitors.”</p><p>“Yes, Your Eminence. I will bring you something light to eat later”, the woman nodded and, with a martial bow – after all she was a soldier –, she left.</p><p>“Thank Heavens she is steady and sensible when she works…”, he murmured to himself once finally alone, but, at the same time, he cursed in his head for not being allowed to leave before morning, because that meant that he would have potentially met everybody the day after even if now he was “safe” in there… that also meant that he would have had to find some kind of excuse to tell them, and that he would have had to handle his rediscovered empathy <em>for all those interactions</em>. An empathy that, potentially, could soon become as debilitating as it had been in <em>that </em>rediscovered lifetime of his… or maybe not, since luckily he was a man in the current lifetime, and even if he had this particular condition when he was Shinou’s Daikenja too, at the time he had managed pretty well to keep that under control.</p><p>But truth be told, he was damn scared to find out the current outcome… after all, three millennia and a half caged behind a door – like the Originators inside a box – it could easily have grown stronger and wilder, and now that it was free again… he didn’t want to think about it!</p><p>The main problem, by the way, was that, in order to go back to his previous condition where he was free of that empathy of his, he had to give up this lifetime entirely – all memories included – and start again… and <em>this one</em> was <em>the only lifetime</em> that really counted to be lived after his first one… the one he had lived so long and suffered for.</p><p>He just <em>couldn’t</em> throw it away because, even if he did nothing really essential to justify all the sacrifices and suffering he went through the last four millennia, <em>this </em>life gave him a sense of accomplishment that he had <em>never</em> experienced before so strongly.</p><p>He just couldn’t give it up. Not while he was still so young!</p><p>He didn’t want to, even if it was years now that he repeated to himself that he was bored to death!</p><p>Then, in the middle of that last thought, he realized something that he hadn’t notice before that very moment: he was soon bored because he couldn’t <em>feel</em> anything!</p><p>…now, potentially, he could find himself in a pinch because he felt <em>too much</em> with his emotions out of control!</p><p>He was scared to death of the consequences that could come out of it, but, looking at the situation under this new light, he would have lied if he had told himself that he wasn’t also exceedingly <em>curious</em> to see how his life could change from then on.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ken was torn: a part of him – potentially his pride – only wanted to go and hide from the world (and the temple was the perfect place for that, maybe Shinou excluded…) until he could control this new condition of his, and another part <em>craved</em> to see what it felt like to <em>feel</em> strong emotions again and wanted to run to <em>someone</em> to find out just here and now.</p><p>For example, he could definitely see himself going to Lord von Christ and asking the man to teach him about something he was into only to feel what enthusiasm was again. What joy and desire and passion were! …he really couldn’t wait to see.</p><p>He couldn’t wait to <em>feel</em>!</p><p>…but maybe it was better if, first, he adjusted a bit to emotions again before going body and soul into them, risking to lose himself in that wave of bliss…</p><p>Really: he was torn in two, but after an all-nighter he came to a conclusion.</p><p>He was the Great Sage, and whatever he did, people accepted it. Even when he acted not really “sagely” – maybe only to find someone who would complain to him, treating him like everybody else and <em>not</em> like a deity he <em>wasn’t</em> – no one ever dared openly protest (except for a couple of people that came to mind…); so, screw everything, he would have finally used that title for his own good, to live doing what he wanted to do, and not what other people wanted and expected him to.</p><p>That title and that position, until he continued to do his job impeccably, would have finally granted him the freedom to <em>be himself</em>…whatever that might mean.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ken potentially knew that his pride would have been his first and maybe worst enemy while pursuing that path, but, the moment when he decided to just “go and feel”, he would have never guessed the measure of the problems annexed to this that would have arisen then.</p>
<p>For a couple of weeks he had decided to stay in the castle in order to have more possibilities to live that new condition than he would have had by staying at the temple, and his “plan” worked just fine.</p>
<p>He laughed a lot, he <em>felt</em> all the transport of passion thanks to Gunter and Lady Cheri especially, he <em>felt</em> the peace and calm of Yuuri’s heart – when a certain blond didn’t come and made his “water” boil – and also, he had to say, even sex felt better with his emotions back to their place…</p>
<p>The only one he absolutely needed to avoid in order not to feel like suffocating by just being into the same room was Wolfram.</p>
<p>When he was in his proximity, in fact, he felt exactly like he had felt the moment he had opened the door to the art room with the pyre of what might have easily been more than a hundred paintings burning.</p>
<p>Being near Wolfram was like being near a huge, burning fire with the wind sending waves of hot air in your face: it was asphyxiating, and no one likes to feel asphyxiated.</p>
<p>…maybe…</p>
<p>So, he surely deeply enjoyed fully all his days passed in the castle since the “incident”, but the real problems started at night, when he went back to his quarters to sleep, to the point that, more than once or twice, he had asked Jozak to keep him company in order not to think…</p>
<p>He had noticed in fact that, while people looked at him now, their faces showed shock, perplexity, querying… Practically nobody – exception made for Jozak only, maybe – fully accepted him for being like that… for whom he now was. For being different from what they knew and expected and probably <em>wanted </em>of him.</p>
<p>All day long, in the past few days, he had repeated to himself, over and over again, that he couldn’t care less about what other people thought, of him and his behavior, until he was able to enjoy his time. After all, he wasn’t hurting anybody! …maybe exception made for Wolfram... But, about that, it really wasn’t his fault if the man was too much for him to handle and he couldn’t find a good way to explain the situation to him without feeling ill midway… well: <em>if</em> there even was a “good way” to do that, because a refusal was a refusal anyway, was it made with malice or not – as in this case.</p>
<p>But when night came, everything changed.</p>
<p>When he didn’t have the distractions that the daytime offered him continuously, his mind wandered where he shouldn’t: on people acceptance of him, of his position… sometimes even to the humiliation that being something like a “new Gunter” brought on him, because the perfect, aplomb image he had created of himself over the time was now old story, and at least his proud part wasn’t very happy about that…</p>
<p>The fact was that, before then, he had <em>never</em> really cared about what other people thought of him and of his choices or his behavior, but now, for some reason, he was affected.</p>
<p>…it was as if they didn’t accept that new part of him – that was maybe also <em>the only part</em> he really needed.</p>
<p>When he was witty, when he was <em>an ass</em>, everything was ok, and now it was just <em>not</em>, because he was strange, he acted strange?! Going around and finding people who seemed only able to continue to ask him if he felt fine, if he was ill, was not so slowly making him going mad!</p>
<p>Lord von Christ could be like that, Lady Chery could be like that, even <em>Wolfram</em> could be like that, but <em>he</em>, the Mighty Great Sage to whom everything was allowed – even being an ass, damn them all! – couldn’t?! Were they all lying to him all the time before then when they acted as if everything he did, good or bad, was ok?!</p>
<p>…well, that’s true that not all people accepted the others for who they were, and also that they’ve <em>always</em> been like that, but all the people who mattered <em>knew</em> and <em>accepted</em> them for who they were.</p>
<p>
  <em>Why couldn’t they accept him like that too?!</em>
</p>
<p>Then he stopped and realized that he felt <em>envy</em> towards the others, and that thought alone – a thought that had arisen an emotion he had so rarely felt before, even in the past – awakened his blackest and deepest anger for the first time in forever.</p>
<p>And he recognized it the moment he felt it: <em>that</em> anger, that frustration was pretty much the same one that in the past had made him hate the entire world – that meant humans and demons with no exception – when he still was a young double black, shunned by the world for <em>his mere appearance</em>, during his first lifetime.</p>
<p>…and then, all of a sudden, he also remembered <em>who </em>had saved him from his own anger and hatred at the time.</p>
<p>At the thought, an overwhelming wave of emotions shook him from head to toe and made his tears rise to his eyes and wet them before he could even understand what was happening inside of him.</p>
<p>It had been all so sudden and he felt so shocked by himself and his <em>total</em> lack of control that, before even noticing, he found himself roaring in the pillow all his rage and frustration and sense of loss for the man who had loved and accepted him so completely from day one, and who now was only a faded image of the shining man he had been…</p>
<p>After that, all memories became vague and, when around noon he woke up, he could only remember that he had cried his eyes dry until dawn, when, at a certain point, he might have fallen asleep without even noticing.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm still not sure if I'll be able to close this story in another one or two chapters (just in case for now I left space for two in the description), but know that it's reaching its end! Yey!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After that devastating night, he decided that today he would have stayed in his room and looked in the eye his own feelings of rejection, envy and shame.</p><p>He needed all his courage and resolution to go to the root of the problem, but he had to do this before it went out of control and beyond the point of no return. So, better now than later!</p><p>He took a deep breath and sat in front of the mirror in his room, both his elbows on the small table in front of him, and he looked straight into his own eyes, searching for answers.</p><p>Searching for what had changed other than his emotions.</p><p>At start, during his youth, he had those feelings, but meeting Shinou had eradicated them from him completely.</p><p>Then, with all the Originators issue, he took on his shoulders the weight of a desperate mission to accomplish at all costs.</p><p>Probably <em>that desperation</em> was the thing that had allowed him to do whatever needed to be done in his eyes. It was <em>his </em>judgment alone over <em>everything</em>, because no one knew as much as him what the situation was.</p><p>Before, he had a strong purpose to pursue with all means possible, and <em>no one</em> could say bah on his decisions when it came to this, because he was acting for “the greater good”, for everybody’s sake.</p><p>But now? Everything had changed since his mission had been completed – even if someone else, in the end, had completed it for him…</p><p>Sometimes he still felt like all his suffering was for nothing for that reason, but to take that weight on his shoulders had been his decision and his decision only, and he had decided to live with that aim, with that weight on his shoulders, <em>on his own accord</em>… because he had believed in it, body and soul.</p><p>So, even if he might still have some regrets about his choices every once in a while, he still felt a sense of accomplishment with his life until then. Even if it had meant struggling all the time, suffering all the time and being frustrated every time that he couldn’t find anything and all his researches ended in puffs of smoke, he had tried, he had fought…<em>he had lived</em>. And that was fine with him.</p><p>But after that? What he was living for?</p><p>What he was living for since then until before getting back his long forgotten emotions?</p><p>The realization of the answer to that last question made him lower his gaze from his reflection for the first time since that conversation with himself had started.</p><p>
  <em>He wasn’t living.</em>
</p><p>He was only<em> surviving.</em></p><p>In fact, he had <em>never</em> been this bored in four whole millennia like in the last few years…</p><p>Suddenly he felt like crying… he felt like screaming and shouting and breaking everything that would have come at hand!</p><p>DAMN PRIDE!</p><p>It had made him believe that what he was doing all this time was living, that being bored was normal, that he was a great man, that he was perfect the way he was and other shit like that! And he had been stupid enough to believe all its lies!</p><p>He deserved to be shunned again, to be rejected! He had been such a hypocrite! Such a stupid ass!</p><p>Then, in the middle of his self-loathing, he reined in his horses before they went too far.</p><p><em>No.</em> He <em>didn’t</em> deserve it.</p><p>He raised his gaze on his reflection again and met his own shame.</p><p>He looked it in the eye and a heavy sigh freed from his chest.</p><p>While looking at it, after having recognized his pride, all his envy towards other people and all his fears of being rejected, of being left alone, vanished at once.</p><p>As if he had finally reached the root of the problem.</p><p>And now he perfectly knew what he had to do to solve it once and for all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And, as I had predicted, next chapter will be the last one!<br/>See you soon! :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ken jumped off the chair and his feet moved on their own, guiding him through gardens, buildings and hallways until he reached the door to the art room.</p><p>In front of there, as if by instinct, he stopped and turned toward the closed door.</p><p>The air around him while barely standing there was thick and oppressing. Too much oppressing for that room to be empty as it should be since the blond was the only one in the whole castle who used it and, two weeks earlier, he had burned it to ashes – everybody thought – for good.</p><p>Despite that, he could still easily recognize that feeling of oppression on his chest: inside that room, there was definitely whom he was looking for, a – really convenient for him – embodiment of all his previous inner mayhem: Wolfram von Bielefeld.</p><p>He moved his hand toward the knob and he saw it slightly tremble. Then he stopped, took a big breath and then found his courage back to open that door.</p><p>The demon’s aura the last few days after the arson of all his old paintings had been strong and oppressing enough, but now, with a paintbrush in a hand hitting the canvas, it reached all another level of overwhelming!</p><p>With a hand, Ken reached the doorframe as he had done the last time he had been there, and with the other he slammed a fist against his chest.</p><p>Luckily enough, differently from the other time, he now was prepared, in a way, to something like that happening once he would have opened that door, so this time he didn’t collapse and he had been able to keep standing; but, even like that, it hadn’t been easy to accomplish that – only in appearance simple – goal.</p><p>He watched at the blond’s back from where he was, and Wolfram, too focused on his painting, didn’t even notice of his presence.</p><p>There were already other five painted canvas in the room, drying against the wall with the windows, still blackened by the fire of two weeks earlier.</p><p>The big difference was that, from his pseudo-cubism, Wolfram had passed to a full-fledged abstract art without a transition.</p><p>In order to grab the other’s attention and to give them some privacy, Ken slammed the door closed and the blond, as expected, jumped in surprise.</p><p>When Wolfram noticed <em>who</em> was the one in the room with him, he almost lost his grip on the brush in his hand, but he said nothing.</p><p>A long silence engulfed them while they both squared the other, but it was the sage who broke it.</p><p>“Why?”, he asked only, and Wolfram looked at him for a long while with a confused expression on his face, but with not enough guts to ask him what he meant… until he just got it.</p><p>“Because there <em>must</em> be a way to convey my feelings to him! And I won’t stop until I’ll find it. Even if it means the death of me, I will find a way. Because I hope there is a way… no”, he corrected himself then, “I <em>want to believe</em> there is one! And you can laugh at me as much as you like, but you won’t be able to crush this my belief.”</p><p>“You will burn yourself and everything in your path along the way, and after everything is burnt, oxygen included, you will suffocate and die… do you realize that?”</p><p>Wolfram, who expected the sage to laugh at him and his craziness, remained befuddled by that totally unexpected and serious reply coming from him instead, but after a resigned sigh he answered back.</p><p>“Yes I know, but that’s how I chose to live… that’s the only way I know how to. After all, the only thing I’m great at <em>is burning</em>. If I lived another way, it wouldn’t be me anymore… if I had to live another way, I would be already dead.”</p><p>To these words, the sage replied nothing and made to leave, but he stopped at the door and turned back.</p><p>“Wolfram?”, he called him since the other, when he had made to go away, had come back to his ongoing painting, and since the sage had so rarely called him by his name during a conversation until then, Wolfram turned towards him to hear what more he had to say to him.</p><p>When their gazes met, only three words more left the sage’s lips: “I am sorry.”</p><p>Then, finally said what he had to say, Ken turned his back at him again and left.</p><p>For a long moment Wolfram stayed frozen still on his place, too befuddled by the unexpected outcome of their short conversation, but before he knew it, he was running toward the door in order to stop the other, because he couldn’t leave the first breach in his favor since the day they met alone.</p><p>“Ken!”, he shouted in the hallway, and since it was <em>the</em> <em>first</em> time he had used the sage’s first name – something that not even Yuuri had ever did, damn Japanese customs! – Ken stopped dead and turned to meet his gaze again.</p><p>At that point, Wolfram scoffed trying to hide his elation, but failed and started to laugh in the other’s face, making his next attempt of faked anger sound even more fake. “You definitely should be!”, he scolded him, and, as if it wasn’t already embarrassing enough, Wolfram started to laugh even harder than before, making a total fool out of himself and, for once, not caring at all.</p><p>In front of that reaction, maybe not only due to his reborn empathy, the sage laughed back as much as hard and, without any need for giving him a reply, he turned again and left.</p><p>He was definitely starting to see why some people would choose to live like that.</p><p>And maybe now that he didn’t have any grand mission to accomplish anymore, he could take that option in serious account. After all, the time and conditions had changed immensely since the time he had reached, as only conclusion available for him, to sacrifice a part of himself – his emotions – to go on and live.</p><p><em>Maybe this feeling of suffocation is not as bad as I thought it was…</em>, he pondered to himself, and the more he walked away, the more he was getting convinced of that newfound truth.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Aaaaand: done!<br/>I hope you liked that!<br/>This one came out really easily and difficultly at the same time... but I'm happy! So, I hope that you enjoyed it too!<br/>Thanks for reading! :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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